Miami Law Faculty Address President Trump's Executive Order in the Media

BY:

Miami Law Staff Report

CREATED:

Wednesday, February 08, 2017

Miami Law’s experts fielded queries from across the country addressing fallout from President Trump’s executive order banning entry to the United States from targeted countries. Professor Rebecca Sharplesswas on the ground and on camera working with the local pushback to Miami-Dade Mayor’s sanctuary decision as well as putting together a Teach-In on the ban, with a noted Yale law professor, who was behind the ACLU’s successful stay; Professor Kunal Parkersussed out the law’s history and comparisons to “wet foot, dry foot,” and Professor Emeritus David Abrahamunpacked the order via Skype from Leipzig, Germany.

University of Miami immigration law professor Kunal Parker also said that Diaz-Balart’s comparison is invalid.

“President Trump’s order singles out certain countries for special treatment and specifically bans Syrian refugees from entering the United States,” he said. “Nationals of the seven targeted countries are henceforth going to be treated differently from immigrants and nonimmigrants from all other countries.”

"This is a tough call because the executive, the president, enjoys extremely strong powers to exclude people or groups," said UM law professor David Abraham. "Some aspects of it will withstand a lawsuit because suspension of refugee admission is very likely within the president's authority. But whether he's devising a scheme that's intended to exclude on the basis of religion is a closer call."

“Ending this policy puts Cubans on the same footing as all other migrants from the entire rest of the world,” David Abraham, professor at the University of Miami School of Law, told the Southeast Texas Record. “If you have no permission, no documentation to enter the country, you will be excluded, and if you enter surreptitiously, you may be detained before being removed.”

Kunal Parker, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, says the 1965 (Immigration and Nationality Act) law ended “overt discrimination” in U.S. Immigration Policy. Parker says that people who are protesting Trump’s executive order probably “perceive what is happening as contrary to U.S. tradition since 1965.”

University of Miami immigration law professor Kunal Parker also said that Diaz-Balart’s comparison is invalid.

"President Trump's order singles out certain countries for special treatment and specifically bans Syrian refugees from entering the United States," he said. "Nationals of the seven targeted countries are henceforth going to be treated differently from immigrants and nonimmigrants from all other countries."

But immigration law experts like the University of Miami's Rebecca Sharpless, president of the local chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, insist the Mayor is not obligated to yield to Trump.

“The Mayor acted in haste," says Sharpless. "There is no dispute that these are requests, not mandates, by the federal government. The law in fact prevents the federal government from compelling states or cities to enact or administer a federal program.”

UM Law students interviewed about Muslim ban executive order and Miami Law’s Teach-In. Included is information about the Immigration Clinic pro-bono assistance to the UM community with undocumented and Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals status.